May 1st- First day in the City :)

So this was our first free day to explore the city as well as the first time we were able to take cameras with us. We are supposed to leave the center in groups of at least three which can make it hard to do what everyone wants to do. I had planned to head out with one group of people but when I realized there were twenty people with them I decided to hop ship so I invited myself with a smaller group as they were walking out the door. The day ended up being an adventure!

We headed to the Old City via Lion's or St. Stephen's Gate. We were planning to go to The Dome of the Rock but we ended up being there when they don't let white people in (the vendors terms, not mine haha). So we wandered our way into Bethesda. Bethesda is the pools where it is said that Jesus healed a lame man when no one had the compassion to place him in the bubbling waters of Bethesda. There is a cool church there now called St. Anne's after the Virgin Mary's mother. The pictures captions will describe what we did there but one thing I didn't get a picture of was this Spanish woman holding this kitten. There are feral dirty cats all over Jerusalem and as most people know I love cats but even I won't touch these cats because I am pretty sure it would kill me. Well this tourist picked up the kitten and was holding it over her head and cooing to it like in Lion King. It was really ridiculous and you could tell the cat was terrified.

Next we went to Jimmy's Bazaar; Jimmy has a shop selling really cool olive wood carvings and he caters to Mormons. One guy in the group said he needed to go say hi because him mom buys a lot of stuff from Jimmy. Little did we know that his house is like an olive wood museum and she is like Jimmy's best customer. Jimmy welcomed us so warmly and showed us everything in his store and then he took us next door to his friend's restaurant called the Philadelphia. We realized soon after we walked through the door that it was a really nice restaurant that had hosted both Jimmy Carter and Chelsea Clinton. He bought us a shwarma dinner (shwarma is basically meat in pita). It was absolutely amazing food, especially the hummus and we were so stuffed. That's him in the picture with us at the restaurant. We now LOVE Jimmy and visit him often.

Jimmy and us at Philadelphia!

Door to St. Anne's: Interestingly, the church was to be destroyed in the Islamic conquest but was saved by a Muslim whose name I don't remember but it was used for a time as an Islamic school so there is Arabic writing above the door and was later restored to the Catholic church. 

I love the wildflowers here and especially all the poppies. They will all be dead shortly since the rains have been long gone but I am trying to take pictures of them now so I can remember that this place isn't always so brown. 

Bad pic of me but this is in an underground basilica to St. Anne under the church. The colors were so beautiful!